Short Stories Books

I'm very sad that the Hairy Maclary books are no longer available in paperback. Our family has 3 Hairy Maclary paperbacks and would like to purchase more. We LOVE the books. The stories are great and the pictures are beautiful.

I'm so sad that this book hasn't gotten more press! My daughter is 4 now, and we've been reading it since she was about 2. The animal noises are fun to make and hear, and the pictures fit the descriptions perfectly! We particularly like the fact that you can see the dog's tail on the right hand page as it is going to investigate the horrible cacaphony. Give it a chance!

Scarface Claw is the toughest tom in town, but even he can meet his match. After chasing a few small animals, he sets out after a blackbird high in a tree and gets stuck. So begins the caterwauling.

Hairy Maclary (from Donaldson's Dairy) and his friends (Hercules Morse, Bottomley Potts, Schnitzel Vonn Krumm, etc.) are each disturbed by the strange sound. Each goes to investigate what could be making the terrible noise. Together they find out. But what happens when the toughest tom in town is finally rescued? Does he chase the dogs like usual, hide in shame, pretend he meant to do that? Read and find out.

Lynley Dodd's verse and pacing proves as fresh as ever in this adventure of New Zealand's favorite scruffy little dog. Fans of his friends will be pleased that the rest of the dogs in town are also present. Check out all of the Hairy Maclary books.

Our 3 children have loved this book with all the different dogs and the sounds they make. One child makes the yowling cat sound and I do the dogs. They occasionally join in and it can become very entertaining. It just depends on how mellow or raucous you want to be. The story is simple but cute and the rhyming is creative and catchy.

Before even thinking about reading this one aloud, grab a really big glass of water. All the dogs from the first Hairy Macleary are back and making all sorts of barks, and then there's the sound that echoes around...

If you haven't read any Hairy Macleary yet (and why not!!?), they are great read-aloud stories with plenty of tumpity rhythm and rhymes. (Not to say that you can't secretly grab one and read it quietly, too.)

Beginning with suggestions for ways you and your little reader can get the most out of the book, Friends Forever is a collection of three very short stories about two friends. In Cleaning House, Hare and Rabbit clean their house, only to discover that they now miss the things they threw away. A toy from a cereal box, in Mind-Reader Ring, causes a little friction as Hare becomes uncomfortable with the idea of Rabbit being able to read his mind. And in Boo-Boo Bunny, Hare gets jealous when Boo-Boo, an old friend of Rabbit's comes to town and invites them to see her perform in the circus.

The stories are just the right length for first and second graders. The illustrations are cute. Definitely not for kids much older, though, as the stories are a little boring for them.

Hare and Rabbit:Friends Forever is my second grade daughter's favorite new book. She reads it over and over and can't wait to read more of Hare and Rabbit's adventures. Thank you Julia Noonan for creating such wonderful characters who bring our children into an imaginary world and teach them values in a fun and endearing way.

Julia Noonan's expressive book perfectly captures the essence of being best friends--with all its ups and downs. The warm, exuberant artwork has a classic feel, and the stories are sensitive and upbeat. Children I have read this with can't wait for more adventures with Hare and Rabbit.

These characters are SO marvelous! Ms. Noonan has got friendship (and the acompanying tribulations) down pat. Her illustrations are totally charming. A must read for all kids.

Hare and Rabbit, friends forever, are totally involved with each other as best friends are. They make their way through three humorous but tender stories, accompanied by delicious watercolor illustrations filled with details kids will love. Cheers for Hare and Rabbit, and for Julia Noonan!

Wow!!! Not a basic cheesy let tie all the end up in a bow sequel. Very Suspenseful. At time a tab bit of humor. All of them don't just up an get married, THE END. Love that!!!
But most of all I like the fact I could see the Holy Ghost working these characters over in a few different scenes of the book. Sandy in the Party, Michelle- Forgiveness Sermon, Liz- Her Sermon. That was so amazing!!! Real characters being "saved" and not "churched" or "very religious"
I hope Ms. Brooks makes one more on these characters. Just one more!!!

I thought that Brooks did a great job with the sequel. I was totally engrossed from the very moment that I started reading. I completed reading this book in 3 days. I found myself reading into the wee hours of the night and waking up in the wee hours of the morning so that I could read it. If you liked the first one, you will love the second!! I am ready for the third.

Author Kimberley Brooks penned a fiction novel that speaks to all women when it comes to believing God for their mates.

Michelle Williams was able to pull herself together after her break up with Pierre Dupree, finding new love with David Parker, the praise team leader at her church. David wasn't built like Pierre, and neither was he as tall, but he was the saved woman's dream for a mate. However, when Pierre called off his marriage to the minister's daughter at the last minute, Michelle began to explore the remnants of the love she still had for Pierre.

It was not long before Michelle ran into Pierre and he took advantage of an opportunity he felt he deserved to get back into Michelle's life and marry her. In the meantime, Liz was called into full time ministry and another level in her spiritual life concerning forgiveness. Coming to learn who her father is and ultimately meeting him helped to take her to that level and find out some things about herself that made sense concerning the man in her life.

Sandy, Michelle's best friend, thoroughly tested her friendship with Michelle by ignoring the unwritten code concerning friends and old boyfriends, but she too had a lesson to learn as she sought forgiveness from God and her friend.

He's Saved... But Is He For Real is a read that prompts readers to pray and wait for God to lead in relationships before making decisions that can not only ruin relationships, but lives. Ladies, just because he's, in church and he's fine, and he appears saved, be patient and watch his `fruit.' That is, if you can't wait on God for an answer.

The theme for this book is forgiveness, something that is sometimes hard when you have been hurt to the core of your soul by someone you love and trust. I recommend this book to women who are waiting on God for their mates, and for anyone who has trouble with forgiveness.


Reviewed by Sharel E. Gordon-Love
APOOO BookClub

I'm glad she did a sequel to He's Fine but is He Saved. This book was very good and better than the first one she wrote. It's basically a continuation on the lives of three young ladies and their journey in finding love. This book was suspenseful from beginning to end. I especially enjoyed the dating adventures Sandy was going through to find true love. This book is so fun and enjoyable to read. By the way things ended in this book, I hope she does Part III. It still had you guessing for more. She did a very good job with this one.

This is the continuation of Kim Brooks' He's Fine But Is He Saved?, where friends Michelle, Liz and Sandy continue their quest for love. In He's Saved But Is He For Real?, Brooks allows her readers to accompany these three women as they continue their respective searches for "the one." Complicating matters in each of their respective searches, Michelle is in a relationship at the time "fine as ever" Pierre Dupree resurfaces, begging her back in his life after having duped her at the alter two years ago. Liz finds herself vulnerable and insecure in her new relationship; later finding that something from her past is withholding her from truly being able to love like God intended. Sandy is still falling for the same old tricks, not only does she continue hurting herself, she hurts those closest to her.

Michelle's strength and obedience in this story is truly amazing. The character trait I liked most in Michelle was the supernatural ability to forgive after having been wronged by someone close to her. Liz confronts her past in order that she is released for her future and Sandy, well she's still Sandy with a lot of growing to do. I think Brooks' next novel in the series just may hold the answer to Sandy's fate. With the help of friends and family, and obedience to God's word, each of the ladies learn that she must let go and let God in finding true love.

Another point I'd like to mention is that while " . . . Is He For Real?" is the continuation of ". . . Is He Saved?," this book can stand alone for people like myself who did not read Brooks' first release. I particularly liked Brooks' writing style and the story progression. I'd definitely recommend this book and look forward to more from this author.

The well-known phrase 'for the term of his natural life' is used by Marcus Clarke to bring home the horrors of transportation and the Tasmanian penal system in the 19th century.
Richard Devine, an innocent man (under an assumed name of Rufus Dawes) convicted of a crime he did not commit, is sent for transportation and assumed killed in a shipwreck. In reality, he is heir to a vast estate (unbeknown to him) and the convolutions of the tale that evolve from this are wonderfully written; the gradual demolishing of Dawes, the unspeakable duality of Frere, the calculating guile of Sarah and the gullible innocence of Sylvia are woven together in a plot that does not end happily ever after. This I think, serves to underline the barbarism and futility of the transportation system.
Based on actual events, Clarke uses his 'hero' to illustrate the depravation and privations that prisoners (and their guards) had to endure. Graphically showing how degradation degrades and power corrupts, the narrative never dwells on gruesome details, instead it relies for effect on the imagination of the reader, which can be more terrifying.
A book that deserves a wider readership.

This was without question one of the most gripping novels I've read in many a day. I first ran across this work in a brief mention by British travel writer/popular historian James Morris, where he thought it akin to the gulag novels of post-Stalinist Russia in subject matter and philosophical content. Add to that a wealth of striking narrative detail, immensely memorable characters (Maurice Frere, Sarah Purfoy, and particularly James North leap to mind), some truly transporting (no pun intended) and incredibly creepy passages, mind-blowing plot twists and turns, and a persistent refusal to provide too pat solutions to characters' problems... Clarke wasn't better than Dickens or Eliot, but neither of the latter could have written this book.

Clarke's masterpiece was published in 1874, after being serialized in 1870-72. Critics have lambasted a few of the less believable elements and some of the pat characterization of a number of supporting characters, but these are flaws to be found in most novels of that time (and ours). Clarke redeems himself by taking the cliches and mannerisms of the nineteenth-century English novel and using them to illuminate a whole new society, one practically mythical to the metropolitan consciousness of the Victorian Anglophone world. This work is a great counterpoint to all those English novels of the day where the hero or villain gets packed off to the antipodes and returns mysteriously changed. The main thrust of the novel, though, was the need to tell the true story of (white) Australian society's beginnings. Clarke, in telling the story of the unjustly convicted Rufus Dawes (aka Richard Devine), provides a panoramic view of early Victorian Australia, from the hellish convict settlements of Macquarie Harbor and Norfolk Island to the nascent frontier towns of Hobart and Melbourne, from the aging memories of the "First Fleeters" (the original convicts who arrived in 1788) to the controversial Eureka Stockade Uprising of 1854. The narrative frequently moves at a deliciously whirlwind pace to accomodate the exciting interaction of characters and history.

Clarke's novel is generally cited as nineteenth-century Australia's greatest and points the way towards more nuanced examinations of the colonial experience in the twentieth century (Peter Carey's JOE MAGGS, about the "off-stage" life of Dickens antihero Abel Magwitch, is apparently very much in this vein). Don't read it just for this reason, though. Please be sure to find the longer, original version, as I was fortunate enough to do. Clarke was forced to produce a revised, shortened version for the original publication, one dictated by his editors that turned the novel into a much more "conventional" Victorian literary production (and has a longer title--FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE). I understand a TV series was made in the mid-80s with Anthony Perkins as North. If this was the case, then it badly needs to be remade on celluloid, because I can't seem to find the series. It's a magnificent novel whose flaws, I think, are amply counterbalanced by its unexpected joys.

It's a collation of events by various persons involved in the penal settlement of early Australia. Marcus Clarke has interwoven these events into a novel of fiction. These are stark facts; and show, as far as I've researched, very detailed. L.P. Hartely said it all,in this case.."The past is a foreign country.They do things differently there." The more you read on, the more you want to know..

LEt me set the record straight first...I have never read this book. I had seen the mini-series almost 10 years ago on CBC Canada. The series was very gripping and always left me waiting for the next in the sequence. Following the end of the series I was determined that I had to read this book. My last attempt to find it was in 1991 when I was told it was out of print and could not be found anywhere. Luckily I have just tripped across the information again and it prompted me to start looking again. Needless to say (but I must) I am thrilled to find it and now be able to finally read it. I hope it is everything that I know it is and more. It is an epic tale of grand proportions. Now if I can only find the video series AND a hard cover copy to add to my library!

Well, as an Australian living in the year 2000, reading this book, written in the 1880s, is an emotional experience.

For it is through works such as this that we can see our past. We can examine the nature of the beast that gave birth to us. Who we are. From whence we came.

If you want to understand why Australians are they way they are, and have the attitudes and language that they do, then give this book a read.

As a student of Rollins College, I took the course "Great Russian Writers". Victor Brook's collection of short stories has been my favorite, definately the most entertaining and thought provoking Russian literature I have read so far. Can you imagine? I even wrote a paper on the recurring theme of happiness in many of Victor Brook's works. Will his characters find happiness or will they simply pursue it in vain? Thank you, Victor Brook, for the great stories.

It is refreshing to read genuine literature in an age of popular fiction. Victor Brook's writing combines imagination with interpretative meaning in each of his short stories. These stories appeal to the inner soul and are adventures in life at its best, at its worst, and in the extraordinary. "A Ceiling with Lizards," for instance, is captivating and evokes thought about why the protagonist ever went to India. The mystery behind each story leads you further into the mind of Victor Brook and encourages you to read more. Victor Brook is an artist with words, and his stories are straightforward and characteristic of literature, which belongs to a generation of uniquely gifted authors.

These are stories for study, for re-reading, for analysis, for plumbing the depths of both human experience and the art of writing. Especially, these are stories for sharing with other lovers of REAL literature, those who are able to undertake an analysis of the nature of reality. Challenge yourself!

Coupling beautiful imagery with eloquent stream of consciousness writing, Victor Brook explores life and humanity in a way that is both refreshing and captivating. His ingenious insights will undoubtedly make a lasting impression on every reader. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand life in a new and profound light.

I read this book twice and I am going to read it again. In the epigraph for the opening story Victor Brook uses the old sailors saying, "Sailing the sees is necessary, living is not as necessary". True, the characters of Brook's stories are not just living, they are desperately searching for the meaning of their lives. The stories are very poetical, philosophical, lyrical, the language is colorfull and inventive. Get your hands on this book as soon as possible!

What can I say about you book?! It. Is. Great. Owen Egerton's short stories are right up my alley - darkly, almost pitch black, hilarious. Gut wrenching. Layered. My favorite entertainment in any genere is simply that which reflects life. And life is funny, sad, scary, loud, calm and everything at different times and sometimes all at once.

We are all headed toward the same fate - read this book and let's connect before then, shall we?

I picked this book up because I wanted a break from non-fiction. I am a scientist and always felt I was wasting time if I wasn't reading about science. But I was drawn to this book for some reason. This book made me think and made me feel closer to the human condition. That might sound lame but it is true. Older works of fiction sometimes give you a connection to by-gone times. This book gives you a connection to our times and to one of the sure things in life (... not taxes).

I love this book because I see myself in it. Every single story touched me in some way, in some personal way. If you have dealt with death, or thoughts of mortality then you will also see yourself in this book. Sometimes it is disturbing but it is always funny and often encouraging in a way. Every mortal person should read at least a couple of the stories out of this book. It is dark at times but never depressing. While reading it I got a sense of the courage and a feel for how much thought Egerton put into this. I hope the Reaper has Owen Egerton's sense of humor.

... you are going to die.

How do I know? Owen Egerton told me. He told me he was going to kill you with a loaf of white bread.

Just kidding! Owen Egerton is not going to kill you with bread...

...but you are going to die.

How are you going to die? I don't know precisely. I know your heart will stop beating. You will stop breathing. But the details that caused the cessation is a little harder to nail down. You might die sleeping, or a horrible disease. You might be in a car wreck. Or you might die flying (and subsequent inability to land) a small plane. Maybe you will be at the wrong end of a Chuck Norris fight. You could be devoured by a pit of pigs. Or maybe it will be a freak accident involving a water slide & Christianity. Who knows?

Question: Who knows how you are going to die?
Answer: Owen Egerton
His Answer: A loaf of Wonderbread, with the crusts cut off.

But before you die, make sure you read "How Best to Avoid Dying", the book that somehow made death funny & sweet. I laughed my head off. Which you would think would have killed me... but it didn't. I died the old fashioned way: Owen Egerton beat me with a loaf of bread.

These beautifully crafted, provocative stories keep you both laughing and thinking. Give yourself a real treat.

Rarely do stories complement each other so well as in this bizarre collection, which is at once darkly tragic, hoarsely satirical, exuberantly hilarious, and deeply moving. Egerton's art is driven by a playfulness which rings throughout all these gems, but it far from undercuts the serious. The variety of genres in this volume, from traditional short stories to blistering flash fiction, fairy tales to self-referential annotations, are all peppered with an abundance of moods and attitudes. The stories strike you with horror, form lumps in your throat, and make you smirk. This assortment of style, form, and tone demonstrates Egerton's considerable versatility. And as plated here together, kicking, whirring, and giggling, they make a multi-faceted medley which lingers on the tongue, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste.

Egerton begins with a short absurdist tale about a spelling bee, in a world where such competitions decide the ownership of land masses and the losers, intrepid 8-10 year olds, are dropped into a pit below stage where the audience can watch them slaughtered. Other stories include a Christian camp where counselors encounter fatal "accidents" in twisted attempts to drive the campers towards a life in Christ; an account of a married couple's tepid romantic life and the deeper sexual ambitions and desires embodied in a talking, knighted penis; a look into the life of Lazarus, resurrected by Christ and now living in the modern day, desperate to die; and a girl who niggles the narrator to not kill her off, which closes the volume on a note of poetic gorgeousness. And these are the more traditional ones.

One story, "Holy," is a sparse paragraph. "The Beginning of All Things" is a two-page story about rodents fighting for a Snickers bar that turns into a prose poem creation tale. "The Adventures of Stimp" morphs into a series of run-on sentences, almost stream of consciousness, which portrays absolute devotion between a hamster and his owner. As a whole, these shorter pieces aren't as good as the longer ones. They are excellent examples of Egerton toying with narrative form, always original, and brilliantly carve a small but powerful piece of art in miniature. However, several of them lack the emotional depth of the longer works, and they all are missing a sense of roundedness--minute details injected into the narrative that both flesh out the universe of the story and greatly contribute to its power to move.

These details are subtle and quiet: ornamentations of a master's hand. In Egerton's hands, they may be lightly whimsical or deadly serious; in either case, they are some of the finest proof of Egerton's capabilities. Far from feeling tacked-on, these details are weaved into the fabric of the fiction, as Egerton plays with his worlds and our minds. One such detail is a description of looking in on the agonized faces in private hospital rooms, "like looking deep into a radiation chamber, knowing that if you open the door--even a crack--all that radiation would zip out and scar your eyes, throat, and skin." With this brief, almost passing note, the whole of the protagonist's relationship with sickness and disease in the antiseptic desert of the hospital is revealed. In "Spelling," the point that America lost Hawaii to Korea in a spelling bee is again mentioned in passing, evoking both chuckles and a sense of terror: in a single line Egerton has given us all we need to know about the politics of this nightmare. Other cases are more light-hearted elements of comedy that show why Egerton has been considered by so many to be an excellent humorist.

If these details describe Egerton's delicate manipulation of narrative, there are just as many examples of immense linchpins: single lines on which the literary value of the story is hinged, which launch the text into the realm of works truly memorable. In such cases, the delicacy is replaced by hammering immediacy, and our hearts and minds are surrendered to the work. In "Tonight at Noon," perhaps the best story in the collection, a jazz enthusiast wakes up to find his girlfriend has committed suicide. He says of jazz virtuoso Charles Mingus, "Most people say The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is his best, and it's good. But Ah Um is going for more. It hurts more. Lives more. Jenny is dead."

These examples may serve to show the incredible sense of balance present in these stories, which may ultimately be what makes them so successful (there is only one exception to this: "The Fecalist" is boring satire--a departure from the usually sophisticated presentation). Comedy and tragedy are bound inextricably; passing jabs, lasting one-liners, and poetic passages are joined by their poetry; whimsy, heartbreak, and joy are merely different sides of the same thing. The stories, in their individual components and as a collection, build off one another with grace and ease.

If a philosophical point is permitted, this playful balance and duality may be the essence of what Egerton calls how best to avoid dying. The characters in these pieces, who are never mere tools of narrative, are all faced, in one form or another, with the agony of dying and the beauty of living. Or is it the other way around? Laughter and sorrow, fear and joy--these may all be the same entity--and assisting that interpretation may be Egerton's primary objective. If this is in fact the case, barring some minor, unmentionable imperfections, he succeeds with dazzling brilliance.

[Author website: www.owenegerton.com]



Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Max Falkowitz, 2007

Joanna Torreys stories are highly erotic, but make you feel cold at the same time. This is really something I have never read before, and I can't wait for the German edition so that all my friends can read it, too!

This is a beautiful collection of short stories and a novelette exploring the psyches of modern women. Joanna Torrey's writing style is easy to read, yet dense with meaning and allusion. Ms. Torrey can take a single metaphor and use it to explore every facet of a character. In "Hungry," the title story, she uses food, gourmet and down-home, to delineate a wonderfully funny woman and her relationships with various men and her own sexuality. In "Sweat," exercise and the homeliest of bodily functions become the lens magnifying a life of secret desire. "Back Rubs" is a marvelously innocent account of filial and parental love (none of the usual psychotraumas-of-the-week in this story). "Snoop" and "Parking Lot" teach you more about relationships and imagination than any self-help book on the shelves. The novelette, "Me and Mine," should be required reading for every secretary, legal and otherwise--this is our lives, in excrutiatingly funny detail. Highly recommended! A satisfying and hysterically funny collection.

I loved every word of this book. It was very funny, and very sad. Anybody who's ever worked in a corporation or been in a "supporting" role at work will recognize, empathize, cheer for and hurt for the characters Ms. Torrey creates so beautifully. Definitely worth the read.

Hungry is a true feast with the novella, Me and Mine, a deliciously subersive and hilarious centerpiece. Anyone who's ever worked in the corporate world -- especially as a worker bee -- will recognize the Dragon Lady, Peach, Plant Man and especially Mine, Almost Mine and Biggest Mine. And I guarantee you'll never look at a dictaphone the same way again.

But, this is not just a comic writer; her portraits of the disaffected can be wrenching, and Back Rubs just might break your heart.

A beautifully written collection of tales. Joanna Torrey's use of extended metaphor as a funhouse mirror to highlight a character's deepest secrets is amazing. Her wicked wit and deep empathy keep the reader transfixed. "Eyes" says as much about the relationship between women and men, patient and therapist, as any psychology textbook. "Hungry" uses food, gourmet and junk, to explore the contradictions of a woman's feelings for the men in her life. "Backrubs" is a sweet, moving memoir of father and daughter, reclaiming innocence for this relationship. And the novelette, "Me and Mine," should be required reading for anyone who has ever been a secretary, especially at a law firm. Absolutely hysterically funny. Joanna Torrey is unafraid to cut right to the heart of a character's bitterness and fear, and she does it with great humor and compassion. A volume that is endlessly rewarding!

I didn't just devour this book, I licked every word off every page and cried when it was all gone. I also loved the aftertaste.

If you like Aimee Bender, Barry Yourgrau, Lydia Davis, Donald Barthelme, you'll enjoy Tognazzini.

Buy it, read it, spread the word. His stuff is yummity-yum good!

I ordered the book after discovering it in "Poets and Writers" and was immediately captivated by the brevity, frankness, honesty of Tognazzini's brilliance on every page. A real treat, must-read, literary gem--underrated.

Anthony Tognazzini is more than a brilliant writer; he is an extraordinarily gifted cartographer. He has created a relief map of the human psyche in its gorgeous flawed glory--the meandering browns and bottomless blues and twisting greens that define our dizzy spirit; the mountains and valleys of dense loneliness that surround our mortal coil. All the beauty and all the blemishes are manifest in his magnificent prose.

"I Carry A Hammer In My Pocket For Occasions Such As These" is intellectual, innovative, insightful, incisive, intuitive, intense, and, FUNNY! Tognazzini infuses his slick, saucy wit on every page. Every day I identify a new favorite among these spectacular shorts. Today I have two: the allusively absurd "The Reason We Were So Afraid," and the vibrant snapshot "Many Fine Marriages Begin at Friends' Parties." The header of this review is a line from "Same Game" that swallowed me whole.

This omnibus is for all of us--those of us with questions and those who have the answers. Those who think and those who feel. Those who are lost and those who've been found. This book is a gift. So, to Anthony Tognazzini, I say, THANK YOU.

(Anthony read as part of my visiting authors series at the West Side YMCA on April 27, 2007. This is from my introduction to the event).

Anthony Tognazzini's stories show an acceptance of calamity, a knowledge that what we prepare for may never come, but something shockingly unexpected very well might. And throughout his stories, sometimes very much coming as a surprise, there are moments of pure empathetic humanity, where Anthony gives us characters simply longing for a better life.

His stories explode the artificiality of social graces and the necessity of violating them to get at the rich, rewarding or scary stuff that life offers us. There's a desire to not be caught in automatic action and reaction, but to be vividly present, awake. Sometimes he does it by having his characters react tangentially to their prompts, never quite meeting the situation head-on, but finding novel ways of engaging their fellow actors, their surroundings.

There's a mounting sense of desperation at the heart of many of the stories in "I Carry a Hammer for Occasions Such As These" Anthony's vivid imagery and twists of language and meaning reflect the fracturing of personalities; the breaks in communication between neighbors, lovers, family members. His well-honed sense of the absurd serves both to heighten the emotional blows when they come, and also to highlight the preposterous and ridiculous moments that life constantly presents us. The stories, written with the economy and force of poetry, are both dream-state and hard-reality, and much of the joy in reading them is the constant subtle shifting between one and the other. But no matter how unusual the image--and I prefer the term original--Anthony always keeps us in the physical realm, rooted in sensation.

Most of the stories are short, some shockingly so. But whether they be a three-sentence story like the clear and utterly concise "The Difference," or rich, extended stories like the violent, erotic and heartbreaking `Gainesville, Oregon--1962," Anthony shows a skill and ability to take us along for whatever the length of the story, like a jazz musician who can play a pithy, classic melody, or can stretch out and blow, always riveting our attention.

Reading Anthony Tognazzini's bracingly original work is a complete pleasure, both an escape and an opportunity to dig in deep to something worthwhile. In one of the last pieces in "I Carry a Hammer..." "Found Story," he writes "I found this gift...and I so much want you to have it."

I often long for a simpler life, with fewer complications and distractions, in which my attention span can occasionally linger to enjoy a particular moment. The sun in my life reached its zenith a few years ago and is picking up speed as it drops toward the horizon and so I tend to resent that, as a society, we boast of our superior ability to multi-task even as we sheepishly admit to the negative effect of refusing to take time out to occasionally clear the mechanism. That said, I've resisted "flash fiction" as something that caters to our ever-shortening attention span.

For the uninitiated, flash fiction contains all of the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, and resolution; but unlike the traditional short story, the limited word length often leaves some of these elements to only be implied in the written storyline, which is perhaps best exemplified by Ernest Hemingway's six-word flash, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Although it can be traced back to Aesop's Fables, with the likes of Chekhov, O. Henry, Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft and Ray Bradbury contributing, flash fiction is enjoying a resurgence on the Internet. Although I sometimes cringe from the niche it fills in our fractured society, despite all of its professed connectivity through cell phones and email, flash is a viable art form that presents a challenge to the writer he or she doesn't normally face when writing a longer piece: strictly meat and bones writing without all of the side dishes.

Anthony Tognazzini seems to have mastered this literary art form with his collection of flash fiction, I Carry a Hammer In My Pocket for Occasions Such as These. Tognazzini understands the concept, in flash fiction, that what is left unsaid is as equally important as what is said. In flash, less is more.

Composed of fifty-seven pieces ranging in length from a single paragraph to several pages, none hit the reader over the head, yet most hit the nail on the head with their brevity, focus and message. From the opening piece, A Primer, in which a naked man paints himself into the landscape, to the title piece about a brief encounter between strangers on the street, to A Telephone Conversation with My Father (yeah, they really do love each other), to The Enigma of Possibility -- how can a man with the longest tongue in the world manage to find a way to pay the rent in the aftermath of having just lost his job? -- to Working Out with Kafka, where Kafka meets himself while riding a bike crossing a bridge, to Old House -- "I know how lonely the house is when there is no one to live there," to Baseball Is Dangerous but Love Is Everything, where love cures a young man's "not-right scramble and his thinking irregular slightly," the result of a childhood beaning on the head with a baseball bat, I Carry a Hammer is a fine collection of flash that ranges from the fantastical to the commonplace, that contains humor and portrays grief and loss, that turns the mundane into the fascinating, and is almost always thought-provoking.

Tognazzini's voice is fresh, his narrative sharp: My stomach jumped like an angry, barking dog and I spun, throwing up in every direction. When I finished, I regarded the abstract, brown-red splashes on the tile. I thought, Pollock, and it seems tailor-made for flash; yet for some reason, perhaps because their text lack a surgeon's precision with a scalpel, the longer pieces, particularly Gainesville, Oregon -- 1962 -- don't work as well. Tognazzini's talent seems to "flash" with brilliance more often in the flash element.

Still, the overall effect of reading I Carry a Hammer is addicting: you never know what you're going to get when you turn the next page, but you can't refrain from taking a peek.

Recommended.

-- From "The Smoking Poet," literary ezine, Summer 2007 Issue

i like this book. it gave me a sense of suspence and eagerness to see what happens next.i like how each character had their own fears , likes, dislikes, and feeling. it also let the reader know what was inside the mind of the girl who was "cursed" by the gypsie and how it affected her.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT A ORPHAN NAMED MEGEN. WHEN SHE WAS CURSED BY A GYSPY. SHE BLAMES HERSELF FOR HER FAMILYS MISFORTUNE.FIRST HER FATHER DIES. THEN HER BROTHER MIKE GOES TO JAIL. HER MOTHER MUST SEND THE CHILDREN TO AN ORPHAN TRAIN. A NICE YOUNG COUPLE BUYS MEGEN. WILL MEGEN'S NEW FAMILY HELP MEGEN UNDO THE GYPSY'S CURSE? READ THE BOOK TO SEE!

MAGDALENE

This was a great book because it told you about orphan kids getting new families and better lives. It was also interesting because you learned about the orphan train and how the little kids lived in that period of time.

The book I read was mostly about a young girl who was put up for adoption with her brothers and sisters. Then she was adopted by the Browder family who was exspecting a baby.
She enjoyed her new family very much. Before the baby was born she got a new puppy. This book has a very good moral to it. I reccomend this book to people who enjoy old timey stories.

I thought that this was a great book. after I read A family apart (book #1 of the series) I decided to read them all I thought this one was the best of the 7 books.

This is one of those books that takes you from one world and brings you into another, in this case southeast Asia. Usually, I have found this quality in certain novels, but not often in short story collections, so I was glad I came upon this group of stories. I particularly liked the stories 'Fingertips Pointing to the Sky' and 'The Hotel Bombay'.

This collection of stories was a very enjoyable read and affected me on many levels. The stories encompassed a wide spectrum of emotions. I read the book in one sitting and then found myself going back a few weeks later and re-reading some of the stories for a second time. While all of the stories were sensitive to the area of southeast Asia they worked as a comment on the human condition regardless of geographic area.

I came across this book quite by accident after returning from an extensive business trip in southeast Asia. I liked the author's attention to detail and wished there were more than fourteen stories included here.

In fourteen stories the author has captured the feel of the area of the South China Sea. Asia is so vast with so many beautiful countries and where better to learn about different cultures than through literature. By reading, one is rewarded with a further understanding of the world we live in. I especially enjoyed this collection of short stories and would recommend it to anyone interested in either the atmosphere of southeast Asia or simply in well written stories.

The one thing all fourteen stories have in common is a link to the South China Sea. Some of the stories are humorous, others deal with serious subjects such as trafficking in women, extreme poverty, a sweatshop owner who's also a rapist, revenge, the Khmer Rouge, and attempts to escape from Vietnam. Some of the stories are predictable and one has a tragic irony. This collection was highly enjoyable and I read it in one sitting.